Environment (Solutions) – Page 16 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/10/182009/10/18

Review: 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Censorship & Denial of Access, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Phenomenal Overview, Reference, Exceeded Expectations

October 18, 2009

Glenn Croston

I bought and read this book along with Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health and Careers in Renewable Energy: Get a Green Energy Job.

This book is everything I could have wanted and more–it exceeded expecations. For each of 75 “opportunities” sorted within eleven chapters it provides a summary table (Market Need, Mission, Knowledge to Start, Capital Rquired, Timing to Start, and Special Challenges, along with a multi-page discussion and a variety of “sidebar” elements that vary but generally address Related Trends, In the Long Run, Green Leader, Industry Information, Information Resource, Eco-Tip, or Eco-Issue.

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2009/10/182009/10/18

Review: Careers in Renewable Energy–Get a Green Energy Job

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions)

Formula Book Well Executed, Superb But “Lite”

October 18, 2009

Gregory McNamee

I read in multiples. See my reviews of 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference as well as Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health for the snap-shot on this round, and at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blogs, use the Reviews menu to access my 49 reviews on Environment (Problems) and my 57 reviews on Environment (Solutions), all with links back to the Amazon page for each book.

This is a 4 in comparison with many other books, and was disappointingly generic and “lite” in the resource sections, BUT this is BEYOND 6 STARS if you do not have a college education and wither will not get one (see chapters on Solar, Wind, and Geothermal) or are just going into college (see chapters on Bioenergy, Hydro, Buildings, and Energy Management)….so I give it a solid 5 over-all. This book is NOT for “mid-career” folks with degrees looking to switch tracks.

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2009/10/162011/10/22

Review: Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Excellent Primer, Narrowly Focused, Provokes Reflection

October 16, 2009

Richard Heinberg

I was tempted to limit this book to four stars because it fails to properly recognize, among many others, Buckminster Fuller, e.g. his Critical Path and it provides only passing reference to such foundation works as Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update and Human Scale, but place it at five stars for two reasons: 1) excessive negativity by other reviewers; and 2) a superb primer for the public ready to get past Al Gore's hysteria, the venom surrounding The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, and connect in a very easy to read and understanding elementary counterpoint to The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity.

Another important reason for attending to this book and respecting its author, apart from him many prior works including the globally recognized The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, is the endorsement of two of the top ten (in our view) in this arena, Lester Brown (Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)), and Bill McKibben (Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future).

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2009/10/112009/10/11

Review: The Design of Business–Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Public Administration, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

In Its Niche Beyond a Six–In Larger Context a Four

October 11, 2009

Roger Martin

First off, what got me to buy this book does not appear in the book at all–the author on record as saying that Wall Street was not designed to make money for its investors, only for its mandarins–the same is true of how universities are designed, businesses, etc. but that one observation really got my attention. I bought the book before BusinessWeek featured it as one of four in the October 5th edition (Europe version), and after looking the others over, chose this one.

In the larger context of changes to the Earth that now take three years instead of ten thousand years, as an entire literature flourishes on The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, the book is a four for narrow-casting and lack of context, but you can use Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, to search and sort among my other 1,400 reviews, so no penalty is warranted, This book will be scored Beyond 6 Stars at PBI/PIB for the simple reason that it addresses the core need of all eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental organizations), to re-design away from the Industrial Era waste (where Six Sigma stops), and to instead envision how the world could and should be, and set out to achieve that–a prosperous world at peace.

2009/10/092009/10/09

Review: Green Intelligence: Creating Environments that Protect Human Health

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions)

Excellent Overview Book, Great Price, Nice Emphasis on Public Information Gaps

October 9, 2009

John Wargo

I like this book. It is not as detailed as any of the following but does a super job of blending together in a very easy to read manner coverage of five areas: nuclear testing, military contamination of training areas, pesticides, vehicle emissions, and plastics.

Among the books I recommend (and have reviewed) for more detailed insights:
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power
The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink
Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Ind
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications

This book would normally have been a four on the substnace of the five domains, especially if one is looking for more in-depth appreciations, but I found the Notes and the Index satisfactory, and the intelligence-information perspective that this author makes a special effort to address carries the book most easily to a solid five.

Highlights from my fly-leaf notes:

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2009/10/082009/10/08

Review: COOL IT–The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming

5 Star, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Science & Politics of Science, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Excellent for the General Reader, Nicely Slams the Hystericals

October 8, 2009

Bjorn Lomborg

I must acknowledge that I appreciated this book all the more for first having read Global Crises, Global Solutions as edited by Lomborg (37 contributors), but I do NOT recommend the latter book–read my summary review instead. This book I most definitely recommend for anyone of any age. By the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, this is now the most current and fluid means of coming up to speed on the relative importance of climate change versus other global crises such as infectious disease and a lack of access to clean water.It is the best available critique of why cutting carbon emissions is NOT the best focus for remediation of global crises, and most certainly not the best way to spend our money. The cost benefit is simply NOT THERE.

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2009/10/082009/10/08

Review: Global Crises, Global Solutions

4 Star, Disease & Health, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

NOT for the General Reader, Get Cool It Instead

October 8, 2009

Bjorn Lomborg (Editor)

I was among those who considered Lomborg discredited when he produced The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, and I now retract two thirds of my rejection in light of The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity and Lomberg's work in creating the Copenhagen Consensus as reported on in this book–37 serious people considering alternative perspectives and ranking remediation options in relation to real cost-benefit analysis, something Al Gore and other hysterics do not do.

This book is NOT recommended for the general reader–it is way too heavy, too many charts, not enough of a flow, a lot of this stuff has to be taken on faith. Instead, I recommend Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) for the general reader, and probably How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place which I may order in a few minutes.

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